Good Medicine

Honey cake for Rosh Hashana.

Been thinking about good medicine and how much we need it. Good medicine is what we do to prove we're more than what we thought we were. In my case, it's about cultivating joy. Every day I ask myself, "What is one thing I can do today that will make me ridiculously happy?"

A random list of incidental activities appear: Novels. I love to read novels. I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love, and I'm delighted by the advice of Ketut, the Indonesian healer in the story, who tells the author to "smile in your mind, smile in your liver." I've been imagining my liver smiling for days now. I have been baking foods from religious traditions I know nothing about, from ingredients I can't eat, just because I love the smell of things baking on an early autumn evening. I have been attending random community meetings just to hear people wrestle with the world, and watching episodes of Mad Men for hours, just because the fashion is sharp and the sound of drinks pouring over ice at 11 A.M. is decadent. I've been listening to new albums (Brooke Annibale, PJ Harvey, Irish music).

All of these things are unscheduled, and on a whim. Good medicine, indeed, for a gal who's life has been a strict regimen of medical routines and work, work, work. Can anyone relate?

By chance, a good friend sent me a 20-minute video of Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love author) talking about "having" a genius rather than "being" a genius. I string that happy thought like a bead on my bracelet of delights.

So, even though the adrenal fatigue has returned, I resolve to give myself a break. I resolve to prove I'm more than a herb-popping, couch-slouching woman who must languish through her condition. I resolve to find my joy, and cultivate delight, free my mind, and smile in my liver, savour my prescription of loving life on a lark. I resolve to dally a little.

What do you call good medicine? How do you shift the paradigm, and stretch your imagination? Does it work?

WHAT the---?!?!

At Googie's Lounge in NYC

Well, I'm totally floored. Two years later and I just did 5 days of travel, 3 nights of work, and more socializing than I usually cram into a month, and I came home completely healthy and non-fatigued.

I think we have a new paradigm.

So on Monday, with my willpower in tact, I started the next phase of getting well -- the dreaded parasite cleanse. I'm using a product called Parastat, tested via applied kinesiology for my correct dosage. Not that I'm done with the heavy metals detox or the modified diet or the mudpacking. Oh, no. 

So I'm keeping things low-key. This month shows are casual (radio interview, farmers market, etc.) and I'm planning to take a little break from all things music so I can enjoy the summer garden, finish some house projects, and watch how those parasites wriggle on out. So gross. 

This winter my hope is to finish those elusive songs that I want on the next album, and continue my process for finding a producer.  It's so nice to be able to make plans. I still don't take that for granted.